Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Gregory Gray. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Alright, Gregory thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Let’s kick things off with your mission – what is it and what’s the story behind why it’s your mission?

Our mission is to help business owners free their businesses and free their lives. We help them find time freedom while increasing the profitability of their company. As someone who spent the first twenty years or so in large companies, I was able to utilize the resources we had at our disposal and understood the power behind that leverage. As an entrepreneur at heart, I wanted to leave the corporate world and start some of my own enterprises. Through acquisition, I bought my first business and went to work while building a second business along the way, the one I run today. I knew that small businesses didn’t have those same resources, and in most cases didn’t know how to find them. The passion for helping business owners harness the resources that large companies take for granted is what fuels my drive today, as it has for fourteen years.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

As a young professional, I was blessed to work for some fantastic automotive and industrial manufacturing companies. Along with becoming a lean and Six Sigma practitioner, I learned how to build high-performance teams that get results. As I grew in responsibility at the executive level, I became proficient in operational efficiency and financial performance. As I yearned to fulfill my entrepreneurial desires, I reflected on what I liked best about my career and found it was all about people and processes. So, I embarked on a journey to take that knowledge and skills and apply it to small business owners. Gray Solutions, LLC was built to serve business owners and their teams through executive coaching and consulting. We have different levels of engagement depending on the needs of the business we serve. We offer a few programs, such as LeaderFluence, an eight-week leadership growth workshop tailored for business leaders. These programs have been created based on the requests and needs of the businesses we serve. We are also launching a new brand, Every Day Business Leader, which is a community-based program that will allow inexpensive access for business leaders to engage with us, including through an iOS app. Looking back, I am most proud of the decision to take the risk to leave the corporate world and embark on a road of entrepreneurship. It has provided me with a lifestyle that serves me and our clients well. I am also proud to be an author of the book Business Owner Freedom as it summarizes what I have learned over the years to make a small business work for you, the business owner.

Do you have any insights you can share related to maintaining high team morale?

Managing a team is important, but it leaves one aspect out of the equation: leading a team. As a business leader, you have to do both: lead and manage. Managing is making sure that what needs to get done gets done right. Leading is doing the right things. It takes both perspectives to be effective with a team. High morale is only maintained by allowing it. First, you have to hire the right people for the right roles. Second, you must give them the resources and support to do their work efficiently and effectively. Thirdly, you have to get out of the way, which may be the most important. No one wants to be hired into a role and then not be allowed to do what they were hired to do. As a leader, setting the vision and mission is critical. The team must know without fail what the clear expectations are for each of their roles, how they interplay together, and how their individual role equates to the vision. As a manager, measuring activities and results is important. As a leader, inspiring and encouraging is important. It takes work every day to be a great business leader.

Where do you think you get most of your clients from?

Referrals are the best way I receive new clients today. Starting out, I had to use guerilla marketing techniques such as cold calls, knocking on doors, and affiliate relationships, not online but in the real world. As we have grown over the last fourteen years, it is mostly through happy clients telling others about us. We have also utilized being podcast guests as a lead source for a few years. That did get us some attention and a few additional clients. We had a podcast ourselves for a few years and did garner some leads, but the energy it took to host an interview-based show was not worth the return. We are considering doing a monologue-style show this year. As we launch the Every Day Business Leader brand, we will have to become more adept at online marketing for sure.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.gregorygray.com
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gregorygray00/

Image Credits
all pictures were taken by my phone